[andrewflnr]

Users of this site who pay attention to how science is actually practiced, and not the oversimplified cartoon version they teach us in school, know that the boundary between a "theory" and a "hypothesis" is rather blurry. For instance, have you ever noticed how it's called "string theory" despite having no real evidence for it? Have you ever heard anyone, let alone a real scientist, complain about this nomenclature?

Early theories and fleshed-out hypotheses overlap a lot. There's no sharp transition from one to the other.

[snowwrestler]

String theory is supported by a ton of evidence in that it can produce many predictions and hypotheses that match observed data. That’s why it’s called a “theory” and why people continue to study it.

What’s missing is a test that would produce evidence that would allow us to distinguish between string theory and competing theories. But that’s not nearly the same thing as saying it has “no real evidence.”

[andrewflnr]

In fact that's exactly what I meant by saying it has "no real evidence". Otherwise you could claim the totality of the universe as evidence for your pet Theory of Everything as long as it's not actually falsified yet, including but not limited to a theory where fundamental particles are fairies who use slide rules to decide how to interact.

[volemo]

If you fairy theory predicts the outcomes as well as the other theories that are on the table now then indeed it belongs there with them until someone finds a way to distinguish them and prove one is a better model of the reality. Better yet if the fairy model makes the calculations "cleaner" and easier.

[philipswood]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but string theory is still in the "it's so pretty and elegant is must be true kind of territory".

Not only do they have no proof, most of the potential experimental confirmations are at energies so high they're effectively out of reach for the foreseeable near future.

[snowwrestler]

You're not wrong, but what you're not appreciating is that the criteria for "pretty and elegant" are the same for string theory, the standard model, general relativity, and any other physical theory: a relatively simple and internally consistent mathematical framework that, when carried through in calculations, produces predictions that match a wide variety of observations, and is not contradicted by any known observations.

Proponents of string theory have not been able to propose an experiment that would allow them to exclude other theories, thereby demonstrating that string theory is better. But by the exact same token, critics of string theory have not been able to conduct an experiment that contradicts string theory, thereby allowing them to exclude it. And science moves forward by excluding theories with evidence (not just complaining about them).

Discussions of string theory among physicists are deeply intertwined with concerns about who gets famous, who gets grants, who gets tenure, who gets endowed chairs, who gets on TV and sells books, etc. But these types of concerns are a constant background noise to the practice of science, going back hundreds of years. Every scientist on Earth tends a private list of the wrong people who are getting too many resources to study the wrong thing.

If the critics of string theory could prove it was wrong, they would have, but they haven't yet. That makes it provisionally correct. Not correct, necessarily--it could be wrong! But it's not wrong yet, which is better than quite a lot of scientific theories proposed across the span of history (for now...).

[andrewflnr]

> If the critics of string theory could prove it was wrong, they would have, but they haven't yet. That makes it provisionally correct.

No, absolutely not. This is the kind of argument an amateur apologist would make for the existence of God. You need to think about what "unfalsifiable" means and why it's a pejorative term in science.

[snowwrestler]

There are tons of tests that would falsify string theory. Demonstrate, for example, that it's not possible to calculate the observed mass of the electron, and you would falsify it.

[philipswood]

Pauli's insult comes to mind: "Not even wrong..."

[AppleBananaPie]

I used to think this same thing but I went down a rabbit hole a few months ago listening to people very critical of string theory like angela collier, sabbine, eric weinstein, peter woit and some others on youtube. Yeah they all have their own quirks but after listening to their take on the history of string theory the common things are it hasn't produced anything but the major proponents of it always talk like it has and in some cases outright lie about things that it has contributed.

I really like listening to brian greene and sean carroll but now when I listen to them, particularly in recent videos, it feels like there is much less substance to what they're actually saying string theory has done.

But who knows! Maybe I'll learn something new and completely flip my world view again, I'm not a physicist by any stretch so have to rely on listening to experts :)

[andrewflnr]

I think you're in agreement with the grandparent post. I took them to be using "must be true" sarcastically, given the rest of their post.

[infamouscow]

I think it's important to draw a distinction between the formal and natural sciences. HN is overrepresented by folks with backgrounds in mathematics and computer science where using "theory" is correct, e.g., set theory.

Bret Weinstein explained the distinction between a hypothesis and theory a few weeks ago on YOUR WELCOME.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ac4MnNrs6g4

[andrewflnr]

I specifically cited an example in the natural sciences, specifically physics. IIRC chemistry and biology do similar shenanigans at times. Again, consider how you could possibly draw a sharp distinction when accumulation of evidence is so often a gradual process.

I'll consider responding to the video if you give me a reasonable timeslice, but I'm not going to watch the whole hour.